Stacy Francis, a financial planner in New York well known for advising women going through divorce, made a key change three and a half years ago that dramatically increased her business: She figured out her firm’s ideal client.

Francis thought about her 10 favorite clients. Although Francis Financial, a 12-person firm, has some male clients, she realized it is women with whom she enjoys working with the most. But she decided to target an even narrower group of potential clients. “Primarily for us, the women that we are looking for are the women who have given up their careers, that have not worked, who have a decent amount of money, but who have not played a role in the managing of finances. And that is our niche,” she told advisors at the Financial Planning Association’s annual conference during a presentation on building a niche practice.

Francis Financial was open to working with anyone going through a divorce before it got super specific on its target clients. Making the change took some bravery. “I was really nervous that the amount of business we would get would be nothing and we would have to close our doors,” she recalled. “I did it because that’s what the books tell you to do. So I did it and can I tell you, we are now working on 30 divorce cases, we are growing at $5 million to $6 million a month in new assets under management, and it’s just continuing to grow year after year. It really started from that kernel three and a half years ago, and getting really brave and saying who we work with. I encourage you to do it too, even though it’s a little scary.”

Francis shared many more details about her clients, her process and her marketing during her presentation, helpful advice for many advisors looking to grow their business.

In addition to determining the firm’s key message on who it wants as clients, Francis has spent a lot of effort learning what matters most to those kinds of women. Her firm did that, in part, by doing a 100-question survey of 150 such women who had gone through a divorce. She found that their top financial concern was having enough money after a divorce so they could maintain their lifestyle and take care of their children. While many of these stay-at-home mothers had lots of experience paying bills, only 25 percent had participated in their family’s investing or long-term financial planning. The biggest mistakes they said they’d made during the divorce process was not understanding spending, failing to consider the long term, taking the family house as part of their divorce settlement, not knowing all of their family’s assets, and not understanding the tax impact of certain decisions.

Approximately 64 percent said it would have been helpful to have a financial advisor. The most important characteristic of a financial advisor for those who did or would hire one was honesty, followed by being a good listener and experience. “Most important, women want someone they can trust,” she said.

How best to work with women going through a divorce? Francis named these key steps for advisors:

“When you come to Francis Financial, you are not just hiring us, you are getting a team of experts that we have cultivated over the last 15 years who are the top experts in the area of divorce and changes for women focusing on taxes, estate planning,” she said. “We have amazing therapists who we work with and a fantastic group of matrimonial attorneys who we trust. And she may not need all of those individuals. She may not need a forensic accountant or someone to value the house. But knowing you have those professionals as resources really makes a big difference.”

Francis also holds many events to cultivate this network. For example, she regularly schedules lunches on Tuesdays at noon to which she invites five or six people from her network for discussion. Sometimes she invites them to participate on expert panels with her.

Francis adds her target clients really need a confidence boost. “Let them know that, ‘If you can balance a check book, this investing stuff, we can do together. You’ll be just fine.’ It’s really important that there’s education along the way [about money].”

Another important approach is to provide a “judgement-free zone,” Francis added. “Why do a lot of women prefer to work with women over a male financial advisor? This is typically the no. 1 reason: Because they are worried they are going to be judged … Can you imagine, if I took your personal budget and I put it up here, and I went through it line item by line item, and I looked at all the places you stay, all the places you eat, how much you spend on your coffees, and how much you spend on your clothes. How would that feel? … What’s interesting is this emotion is exactly the same for women who spend $50,000 a month to women who are spending $4,000 a month. … You have to be sure you don’t use your own judgments for her.”

Her Process

During their first meeting with a potential client, a Francis Financial team member asks about 100 questions. “We listen, we don’t talk. We then take all that information and put it together in a financial roadmap. … It tells her the important people in her life, her goals, it talks about where she likes to spend her time, her values, what’s important about money. And then at the very end it goes through her balance sheet. Then we look at all the assets and help her understand the portion that’s in tax deferred, taxable, cash, how it’s allocated, the tax impact of all those things. And it’s for free.

“How do we afford to do it? I hire a lot of great interns. And they write it for us, and then we proof it. It works really great for the interns and it works really well for us because we learn a lot and then we are able to show her everything she needs to see to know and how it would be working with us,” Francis said.

Following those discussions, when the firm and the client commit to working with each other, Francis Financial does a divorce plan or a settlement proposal, and sometimes a lifestyle analysis.

Marketing To Women

Francis points out she spends an enormous amount of time on marketing; three people in her office are dedicated to the task. She even wrote a workbook, “Make 2019 Your Biggest Growth Year Yet.” She acknowledged every advisor may not need or want to make such a big commitment, but can focus on the part that most interests them.

Francis started her own marketing efforts by getting press coverage. “I started my own firm at 27 and no one would give me the time of day. So I got myself on the Today show … it helped boost my credibility significantly … but if you are going to do press, the type that I find gives most ROI is press that specifically focuses on divorce. So when I write an article on investment returns or college planning, it’s great, it’s wonderful, but if I write about women, money and divorce, I get people calling me who are potential clients,” she said.

She has used websites, such as helpareporter.com, to find journalists looking for sources to quote on financial planning topics. When she writes a pitch, it’s short and sweet. In her bio, she lists publications where she’s been quoted rather than her designations and all her experience. Her most important advice? Respond quickly when a journalist is looking for a source, because many others also are trying to get quoted. Use Google Alerts to keep track of your press coverage, and send out emails to clients when you get quoted.

It’s also important to make sure you have a good website. Francis Financial highlights real women clients (no names) of different ages and ethnicities. And she mentions all her press coverage on the site, too.

Then there’s social media. “Should you be doing social media? No! Your intern should be doing social media,” she said. Figure out which sites will provide the best pipelines for the kinds of clients you want to reach, she added, noting Francis Financial has found Instagram is one where a lot of women spend time.

Francis also seeks awards. She looks at the ones that her competitors have gotten and targets them. Her interns find the submission forms and then they submit, and she keeps trying even if she doesn’t get one the first time around. “There are a lot of great awards out there … and what it does is it boosts your searches to the very top. If it has “best financial advisor” in the name, that’s a term that people often search for.”